The Tories landed a cool £8,345,687 in donations last quarter, but a row has broken over whether the miserly skinflints at CCHQ are failing to pay their reams of election “volunteers”. The well respected Graduate Fog campaign site highlight how Tory HQ are advertising for young turks to “assist with different aspects of the party’s work”, an unfortunate choice of words since “work” falls under Minimum Wage Law.

Tory sources insist these are genuine volunteers mainly doing telephone canvassing – and there is of course a distinction between that an real work – but why then do they need “excellent written communication skills” and “knowledge of the Microsoft Office Suite”? “Successful candidates” are only offered “lunch and reasonable travel expenses”.

Westminster North Tories meanwhile are looking for “campaign assistants” to help with “administration, data entry, analysis and day to day running of a busy office”. How much will they be paid for what certainly sounds like real work? “Travel expenses within London” is all that is on offer. Clearly the party is clued up on the internal memo from last year explaining how to word job adverts to get away with not paying interns.

As Graduate Fog put it:

“Are interns at the Conservative Campaign Headquarters really free to saunter in and out as they wish? Having spoken to interns on previous political campaigns, that seems unlikely. They all say they worked like dogs.”

Seems there is no long term economic plan for these hardworking people…